USDA on unpaid school meals – New study on Kalamazoo Promise – White House to hold panel on discipline

By Libby A. Nelson

02/18/14 10:00 AM EST

With help from Caitlin Emma, Maggie Severns, Nirvi Shah and Stephanie Simon

WILL USDA PROVIDE MORE GUIDANCE ON UNPAID MEALS? The Agriculture Department sent a letter last week to states and local education agencies, saying they shouldn’t deny food to kids whose parents haven’t paid for school meals. “While addressing unpaid meal charges is ultimately a local policy, states and local educational agencies can take positive steps to prevent potential issues,” Under Secretary Kevin Concannon wrote, suggesting measures schools can take, including not charging students eligible for free lunch and creating a strong policy on notifying parents with low balances. But the School Nutrition Association is hoping for more specific guidance, saying that budget crunches mean some schools can’t afford to implement recent school lunch legislation. More for Pros from Tarini Parti: http://politico.pro/1fuWVfR

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THE DIFFERENCE FOUR YEARS MAKES (IN DEBT): The average bachelor’s degree recipient is paying about $79 more per month, or $949 more per year, on student loans compared to his or her counterpart from four years earlier, according to a new student debt analysis from the New America Foundation. The report looks in detail at the debt figures for each sector, breaking out the average monthly payments for graduates with debt from a four-year public college ($272), a four-year private nonprofit ($343) or a four-year private for-profit college ($425). More on how indebtedness has grown over the past four years in the report: http://bit.ly/1gxZt0W.

THE PROMISE OF A PROMISE: Back in 2005, an anonymous donor promised the public school students of Kalamazoo, Mich., scholarships to attend any college or university in the state. All they had to do was make it through high school. Research published today in the journal Education Next looks at the effect of that pledge — and finds promising results. In the years after the Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship was announced, student behavior improved, disciplinary incidents dropped and suspensions diminished. Academic performance improved, too, though not across the board. The biggest effect: The grade point averages of African-American high school students increased by 0.7, or more than two-thirds of a letter grade. Read the article: http://bit.ly/1gvHveN.

COMING UP LATER THIS WEEK: The Education Department starts a new round of negotiated rule-making on debit cards, PLUS loans, state authorization and a host of other issues.

TRACKING GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT MEETINGS: In addition to the Association of Private-Sector Colleges and Universities, Young Invincibles, Campus Progress, and two individual for-profit colleges, the White House Office of Management and Budget has now met with the Institute for College Access and Success and US PIRG. Records of those meetings — and the handouts groups bring along — continue to go up here: http://1.usa.gov/1gy68Ij.

WHITE HOUSE HOSTS DISCIPLINE PANEL: The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans is hosting a discussion Wednesday morning on promoting school discipline policies that are equitable to African-American students. Representatives from the Dignity in Schools Campaign, which promotes alternatives to zero-tolerance policies, suspension and expulsion, will be among the panelists. The event follows guidance released by the Education and Justice Departments in January on the same subject, which highlighted how discipline policies can violate civil rights laws and provided guidance for developing new policies. The conversation starts at 8:30 a.m. at the Education Department.

-- Republican worries: Reps. John Kline, Todd Rokita and others have some concerns with the new guidance. They sent a letter last week expressing concern that the guidance doesn’t give teachers or administrators enough flexibility to judge and handle discipline cases at school. http://1.usa.gov/1lPEyHT

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SKANDERA REMAINS “DESIGNATE”: Embattled New Mexico state chief Hanna Skandera again failed to win confirmation from the state legislature Monday. Skandera has been education secretary-designate since her appointment in 2011, and it appears she’ll keep that unconfirmed status for a while longer. The rationale: Union officials and others say she doesn’t meet a constitutional requirement for the position: being a qualified, experienced educator. Skandera was an adviser to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and deputy education commissioner for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush but hasn’t been a teacher or school administrator. Bellwether Education Partners’ Andy Smarick reaction on Twitter: “Treatment of Skandera by NM leg is infuriating. I worked closely w her for 2 yrs; she’s experienced, smart, prudent.” The lack of the official title isn’t keeping Skandera from changing the New Mexico education landscape, however, as a plan to revamp teacher evaluations, for example, moves forward. More from KOAT 7 News: http://bit.ly/MthQsU.

BIG MEETING TODAY IN FLORIDA ON COMMON CORE: Opponents of the standards will be out in force when the Florida Board of Education votes on a series of additions and changes, including adding cursive writing back into the standards. They don’t think the changes go far enough. More from the Tampa Bay Times: http://bit.ly/1gxYgXn.

AND A FRIDAY NIGHT FLASHBACK: Education Secretary Arne Duncan was MVP of the All-Star Game. His highlights, plus video from his Harvard days, from Deadspin: http://deadsp.in/1gy4aHW.

NEW ANALYSIS, SAME STORY ON SIG: A new analysis of the Education Department’s School Improvement Grant program shows the same results as an earlier, flawed version: The program is having mixed results. Two-thirds of schools made modest gains, but the other one-third actually got worse despite a $5 billion federal investment in the program overall. The Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences plans to conduct a longer-term evaluation of the program, which will include student-level longitudinal data. More for Pros from Caitlin Emma: http://politico.pro/1jxPSa4.

IN TODAY’S FEDERAL REGISTER: Find two competitive grant program announcements from the Education Department that aim to provide educational services to Native Alaskan [ http://1.usa.gov/1fuW0w6] and Native Hawaiian [ http://1.usa.gov/1c0wnCD] children and adults, including building schools that serve a students who represent a majority of either group of children.

DOES ACCREDITATION REALLY STIFLE INNOVATION?: The University of the People, a five-year-old startup with mostly volunteer faculty and no tuition, just won national accreditation — an easier bar to clear than regional accreditation, but still a significant hurdle for a nontraditional accreditation. But its founder says an expedited route to a stamp of approval would still be helpful, even if that approval didn’t come with federal aid. More from Inside Higher Ed: http://bit.ly/1gxVXU5.

A SEA BY ANY OTHER NAME: Legislation to rename the Sea of Japan as the “East Sea,” the name favored by Koreans, in textbooks has cropped up in Virginia, New Jersey and New York this year. The legislation already won approval in Virginia and was introduced in New York; the New York Times pointed out it’s a crowd-pleaser in districts with large numbers of Korean immigrants. Now New Jersey is considering its own version of the measure, which would include both names. More from The Star-Ledger: http://bit.ly/1gy1mL4.

SYLLABUS

--A pair of bills in Kansas legislature would require students to get parental signatures before they could receive sex education in school. Kansas City Star: http://bit.ly/1jzrJQx.

--Some colleges and universities are trying to get reluctant learning-disabled students to disclose their conditions before falter — and before they bring down graduation rates. Hechinger Report: http://bit.ly/1jcoLkN.

--A Colorado school district has found ways to keep kids out of truancy court by intervening early when they start missing class. The Watch: http://bit.ly/1g9sduo.

--Temple University’s athletic department faces a Title IX investigation into its treatment of male and female sports. The Philadelphia Inquirer: http://bit.ly/1gxXCsN.

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Authors:

About The Author

Libby A. Nelson is an education reporter for POLITICO Pro and the author of Morning Education. Before joining POLITICO, she was a reporter at Inside Higher Ed, where she covered federal higher education policy – including Congress, the Education Department and higher education issues in the 2012 campaign -- and religious colleges. She got her start as an education reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, where she interned for nine months in 2009-10 and reported on federal policy, including sweeping student loan legislation included in the health care overhaul.

A 2009 graduate of Northwestern University, Nelson also interned on the metro desks of The New York Times, the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) and the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. Her first real job in journalism was in Scranton, Pa., where she worked as a regional reporter for the Times-Tribune. She grew up in suburban Kansas City and speaks fluent French.